Lightning gong could reveal solar system history

LIGHTNING strikes on other planets could help reveal the early state of the solar system.

On Earth, lightning sets the atmosphere ringing like a struck organ pipe with low-frequency electromagnetic waves.

In 2011, a space weather satellite picked up this radiation, showing that the lightning "gong" could be detected from orbit. Now Fernando Simoes of NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland, and colleagues suggest orbiting craft look for similar resonances on the solar system's outer planets, such as Neptune and Saturn (The Astrophysical Journal, DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/750/1/85).

The waves' frequency depends on the water content of a planet's atmosphere. That could be used to help deduce when and where these planets, which were born closer to the sun, formed and how they got to their current homes.

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